Possible Stitches for Fabric

I loom knit a bit and have been thinking about knitting flat fabric for use in some mixed media pieces. I had the idea of flat stitching rows then repeating a flat stitch 5 times on each peg, followed with rows of flat stitches. I was hoping for an I-cord grid. The I-cord element has a bit of a twist which I’m keen on. Probably the result of operator error, but It may not be a problem when using rope. I like the second swatch which is a combination of knit with purl I-cords.

Flat I-cordKnit Purl I-cord


I read about a mock crochet technique on the Guppy Girl blog. I liked the openness of the stitch and decided to make some test swatches using the idea of three forward, back two, repeat… using purl, knit, flat, and e-wrap stitches. For lack of a better description, I named them lace (purl lace) and assigned each stitch and its counterpart (purl) a number.

1. Purl Lace
2. Purl
3. Knit Lace
4. Knit
5. Flat Lace
6. Flat
7. E-Wrap Lace
8. E-Wrap

There are eight stitches with eight combinations, 64 unique swatches. Even though some of the stiches are directional, I decided to treat stitch combinations with the same numbers (1,2 and 2,1) as duplicates. Since the front and back of the knitted pieces are not often the same I anticipated some additional choices.

These are the combinations–11 is Purl Lace with Purl Lace, 45 is Knit with Flat Lace, 56 is Flat Lace with Flat…
Table

I made 36 swatches in the following combinations. From the 36 I selected a few to develop.
Swatches Made

Here are some images of the swatches I am considering using. I did a rather loopy cast on so it was clear to me which was the front top.

11 Purl Lace with Purl Lace; 33 Knit Lace with Knit Lace

1133


55 Flat Lace with Flat Lace; 57 Flat Lace with E-Wrap Lace
5557


77 E-Wrap Lace with E-Wrap Lace; 17 Purl Lace, E-Wrap Lace
7717


The swatches were to give me a notion of possible stitch combinations I could use to make fabric from three types of rope–4-ply cotton, coconut fiber, and jute. After I decide on the stitch combinations, I will need to make a loom to accommodate the thickness of the rope.

Rope

I am in the process of making some larger swatches knitted in cotton and jute twine. To keep the twine from becoming too tight, I placed a piece of dowel on the peg as it was wrapped and knitted off.

CottonJute Twine


Valentine’s Gifts 2012

I like to make fun holiday gifts for the kids in my family. I gave felt a go and realized that I am not one with it. The same was true with buttons. I use binding, embroidery, weaving, and knot techniques in my work so I decided to use some of those techniques to make Valentine’s gifts.

I have been collecting rocks to send to my nephew to add to his collection. This rock is quite heart-like, so I bound it with red rayon embroidery floss for a necklace, or to hang on the wall.

StoneHeart

I have been binding washers to use for code components in some of my pieces. This is a detail of a piece titled, Make Your Own Luck. I used two washer sizes. The color of the washers replace dots and dashes and the smaller bound washers the spaces between letters within words and between words.

LuckDetail

This is a detail that has the washers without binding for spacers and with half binding or full binding to correspond to dots and dashes. The Piece has the full text, “See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, Do no Evil”. The border is coded, “Not to know is bad, not to wish to know is worse”.

DoNoEvil

A couple of years back I saw this blog post at thesmallobject.com using washers to make a necklace based on the work of Anni Albers. This is a photo from the blog post written by Sarah Neuburger.

NeuburgerPhoto

Here is the link to see her great instructions.

So, I got to thinking about binding washers with embroidery floss and then stringing them together with a braid. This is what I came up with. It isn’t chocolate but I think the my niece will like it.

ValentineBracelet

I made some Shrinky Dink bits to use for greeting cards. Realized when I was binding them to the cards that if I made the cord a tad longer the lot could be worn as a bracelet.

ValentineCards

Some of my work can be viewed at GirlArtist.